Hi, I'm Alvian
Engineering Backend Systems
for Hundreds of Millions of Users
Backend engineer with 9 years building and scaling distributed systems for live-streaming and social platforms at TikTok and Sea (Garena) — leading teams, architecting for scale, and driving complex issues to root cause.
9+
Years in Backend Engineering100M+
DAU Platforms Shipped99.999%
Uptime at Scale1M+
Peak QPSExperience & Education
Backend Tech Lead
TikTok · Singapore · Feb 2023 - Present · 3 yrs 7 mos
Tech Lead for TikTok LIVE Foundation team in Singapore.
Expert Software Engineer
Sea (Garena) · Singapore · Aug 2018 - Feb 2023 · 4 yrs 7 mos
Led the backend engineering team to deliver core features for BOOYAH!, a global mobile game live-streaming platform with 1M+ DAU.
Architected high-performance microservices using Go, C++, and gRPC, achieving 99.9% availability and sub-second latency at 100K+ QPS through implementation of multi-IDC failover, adaptive load balancing, and circuit breakers.
Drove multiple performance optimization initiatives, including multi-layer distributed caching, predictive fetching, and adoption of low-latency HLS.
Researched and implemented a multi-IDC live-stream transcoding cluster leveraging FFmpeg with CUDA acceleration, improving price-performance by 16× compared to CPU-based transcoding.
Partnered with ML engineers to launch content-based recommendation systems, increasing CTR by 30% and DAU by 7%.
Designed and built a user connectivity graph using NebulaGraph, enabling multi-account linking, fraud detection, and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) capabilities.
Software Engineering Intern (Android)
Sea (Labs) · Singapore · Jan 2017 - Jun 2017 · 6 mos
Developed core interactivity features for BeeTalk Live, a mobile-first live streaming application with 100K+ DAU across Southeast Asia.
Implemented a real-time GPU rendering pipeline, achieving 20%+ device load reduction compared to CPU-based solutions, preventing overheating while improving stream smoothness.
Implemented ping-pong FBO rendering based on novel research papers to optimize frame latency, consistently achieving 60+ FPS streams on low-end Android devices.
Proposed and integrated RTMP adaptive bitrate streaming, alleviating 60% stutters under poor network. This solution has since been integrated into the Garena core mobile streaming library.
Implemented centralized configuration platform using Flask and Nginx, enabling dynamic adjustments of streaming hyperparameters for different devices.
Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering
National University of Singapore · Singapore · 2014 - 2018
Specialization in Large-Scale Computing · First Class Honours (Summa Cum Laude).
Featured Projects
A Modern Portfolio Theory tool that benchmarks a user's holdings against an efficient frontier and suggests an optimal rebalance, computed client-side via Monte Carlo simulation and a Frank-Wolfe frontier solver, with live market data pulled from Yahoo Finance.
An interactive, AI-generated storytelling app — pick a genre, core theme, and tone, then shape the story choice by choice using your own Claude, Gemini, or OpenAI API key.
An interactive lineup finder for Valorant, mapping agent utility (smokes, mollies, recon, and more) to precise stand-and-target spots across every competitive map, with community-submitted and rated lineups.
A multiplayer mobile rendition of the board game 7 Wonders, built with Unity and Photon Engine.
A gamified traffic management simulation for public engagement and education, built as a final-year project at the National University of Singapore.